Noah (2014)
Country: US
Technical: col 138m
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Cast: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Emma Watson, Anthony Hopkins, Logan Lerman
Synopsis:
The descendants of Cain wreak industrial chaos on the Earth, and God determines to erase creation and start afresh. He chooses the last in the line of Seth, Adam and Eve's third son, to build an ark and gather the innocent animals before the deluge.
Review:
Aronofsky's New Age Noah leads to some interesting, and even genre-bending, inflections. We have a world blackened and made barren by Man's depradations (some great use of locations here), with Methuselah's mountain an island of green guarded by fallen angels in rock form; Ray Winstone's wicked adherents are clearly meateaters, whereas Noah and his family eat, well, nothing at all apparently, since nothing grows. There is an illuminating cause given for the estrangement between Ham and the patriarch (matters of issue are central here: how are the sons to procreate without wives? is it that God does not want any more humans?), though the episode from Genesis wherein the drunken Noah is discovered naked by his sons is coyly included, albeit with an altered emphasis. Throughout, as might be expected, Aronofsky allows his characters to breathe, and Crowe delivers one of his best performances in years, while Connelly is superb, too. All in all, it is an impressive, eye-catching production, with plenty for the mind to feed on as well as the eye, and grandstanding scenes of destruction do not take precedence over equally expensive, but more awe-inducing, shots of the animals entering the ark. Could this be a cue for the rehabilitation of the biblical extravaganza? Its considerable worldwide gross of some $300 million, and the almost contemporaneous release of Scott's Exodus would seem to answer in the affirmative.
Country: US
Technical: col 138m
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Cast: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Emma Watson, Anthony Hopkins, Logan Lerman
Synopsis:
The descendants of Cain wreak industrial chaos on the Earth, and God determines to erase creation and start afresh. He chooses the last in the line of Seth, Adam and Eve's third son, to build an ark and gather the innocent animals before the deluge.
Review:
Aronofsky's New Age Noah leads to some interesting, and even genre-bending, inflections. We have a world blackened and made barren by Man's depradations (some great use of locations here), with Methuselah's mountain an island of green guarded by fallen angels in rock form; Ray Winstone's wicked adherents are clearly meateaters, whereas Noah and his family eat, well, nothing at all apparently, since nothing grows. There is an illuminating cause given for the estrangement between Ham and the patriarch (matters of issue are central here: how are the sons to procreate without wives? is it that God does not want any more humans?), though the episode from Genesis wherein the drunken Noah is discovered naked by his sons is coyly included, albeit with an altered emphasis. Throughout, as might be expected, Aronofsky allows his characters to breathe, and Crowe delivers one of his best performances in years, while Connelly is superb, too. All in all, it is an impressive, eye-catching production, with plenty for the mind to feed on as well as the eye, and grandstanding scenes of destruction do not take precedence over equally expensive, but more awe-inducing, shots of the animals entering the ark. Could this be a cue for the rehabilitation of the biblical extravaganza? Its considerable worldwide gross of some $300 million, and the almost contemporaneous release of Scott's Exodus would seem to answer in the affirmative.
Country: US
Technical: col 138m
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Cast: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Emma Watson, Anthony Hopkins, Logan Lerman
Synopsis:
The descendants of Cain wreak industrial chaos on the Earth, and God determines to erase creation and start afresh. He chooses the last in the line of Seth, Adam and Eve's third son, to build an ark and gather the innocent animals before the deluge.
Review:
Aronofsky's New Age Noah leads to some interesting, and even genre-bending, inflections. We have a world blackened and made barren by Man's depradations (some great use of locations here), with Methuselah's mountain an island of green guarded by fallen angels in rock form; Ray Winstone's wicked adherents are clearly meateaters, whereas Noah and his family eat, well, nothing at all apparently, since nothing grows. There is an illuminating cause given for the estrangement between Ham and the patriarch (matters of issue are central here: how are the sons to procreate without wives? is it that God does not want any more humans?), though the episode from Genesis wherein the drunken Noah is discovered naked by his sons is coyly included, albeit with an altered emphasis. Throughout, as might be expected, Aronofsky allows his characters to breathe, and Crowe delivers one of his best performances in years, while Connelly is superb, too. All in all, it is an impressive, eye-catching production, with plenty for the mind to feed on as well as the eye, and grandstanding scenes of destruction do not take precedence over equally expensive, but more awe-inducing, shots of the animals entering the ark. Could this be a cue for the rehabilitation of the biblical extravaganza? Its considerable worldwide gross of some $300 million, and the almost contemporaneous release of Scott's Exodus would seem to answer in the affirmative.